Episode 42; 2016: EDDIE THE EAGLE

Another life-affirming, hugely positive slice of film fun again this week, with Dexter Fletcher's 'Eddie The Eagle', which documents the true-life rags to (almost) riches story of Eddie Edwards who, through sheer force of will, managed to capture the hearts of the whole world in the 88 winter olympics.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Hello everyone, welcome back once again. This is Milestone Movies. I'm Dave. Welcome. I will be talking today about 2016, which means it's our 42nd episode of Milestone Movies. The film I'm going to talk about today is Eddie the Eagle, which if it's not one that you're familiar with, I think you would really enjoy. It's a British film about a real-life skier who very much uh sort of amateur made good, uh, really got the country behind him and uh went to the Olympics and was uh a huge national hero briefly. But um we'll move on to that in a little while. Uh the other movies that were around in 2016, um I'm gonna read the top five films out, list uh those and give you a little bit of insight. There's something that connects them all and was actually a bit of a uh a record-breaking year um for a reason. See if you can get it before we get there. Uh so the first one uh is Civil War, which is the third Captain America film. It's Captain America, Civil War. Uh, one of my absolute favourite MCU films. Until Endgame, uh, three years later, Civil War was the top of my list. I think it's amazing. What it manages to do, it manages to be a sequel to Captain America, it manages to be basically another Avengers film because there's so many other characters in there, and it becomes, you know, Cap versus Iron Man, and it's these two opposing teams, Civil War. Um, but what it also does is introduces two, well at least two, but all the sort of peripheral characters around them as well, like massive future stars of the MCU, and they're introduced into this, and it doesn't interrupt the narrative of this film, it doesn't sort of take away from what this film's doing. It manages to be an origin for both Spider-Man by Tom Holland and um uh Black Panther, uh Chadwick Bozeman, and it you know introduces their worlds and their you know backstories and how they became who they are, and it manages to do all of that while still being an amazing film of its own right, which it properly keeps you sort of on the edge of your seat all the way through, and I absolutely love it. The way they were, you know, managing to pull all these threads together. Um and it was Marcus and McFeely that wrote it, uh, and it was directed by the Russo brothers, who again have done all the previous um uh previous Captain America films and would go on to do the next two Avengers, so Infinity War and Endgame, one of the greatest films of all time, um, and are coming back to do Doomsday. So big, big, big um expectations for that one. Uh the second biggest film was Rogue One, which is a Star Wars story. So this was your um kind of prequel to the original Star Wars. So it's set just before um the first Star Wars, some people could like to call New Hope, but I still call Star Wars, um, and it's about how the plans for the Death Star were stolen and basically, you know, they make started making their way to the Rebel Alliance, which is what Princess Slayer's carrying, and that's how the whole first Star Wars starts out. So it's the prequel to that. Um, and it's got Felicity Jones, who's a great British actress, who'd sort of come up over the last few years. Um, and it also introduces the character of Andor, uh, who would go on to be uh it's spun off into two prequels to this prequel series uh on uh Disney Plus as well, which have been very, very popular. Uh third biggest film's Finding Dory, so obviously the sequel to Finding Nemo, uh very much along the same sort of lines, but this time they lose Dory, uh who you may remember has a sort of three-second memory, so easily gets herself lost. Uh this one brings in new characters like a um uh an octopus, who's pretty funny, um, squeezes into various places. So, yeah, that was a huge hit for Pixar. Uh, and another big uh hit for the studio was Zootropolis, uh, or you if depending on where you're listening to this, you may know it's Zootopia, but in uh in Britain it was Zotropolis, and it's basically um anthropomorphic animals, is that the word I'm looking for? So everything is animals, you know, there's no humans in this world, you know, everything is animals of various sizes, and it's quite interesting because another film, not in the top five, but uh a successful film nonetheless, uh, was Sing, which was also out this year. So this is from uh Illumination Studios, uh the Despicable Me Minions studio, um, directed by Garth Jennings, who up to this point had only done uh live action stuff, son of Rambo, uh notably. Uh he was part of a uh team called Hammer and Tongs, uh made a lot of film and TV uh back in Britain. Um and that was a huge hit. This is obviously a bit more of a musical, uh, Matthew McConaughey, um the who we will be talking about Taryn Edgerton in a moment uh from Eddie the Eagle. Uh he plays an ape in that. Um you've got Skylar Hanson, Reese Witherspoon, and you know, if you've seen that, that's you know, probably I would say a funnier, more accomplished film than um Pseutropolis, but you know, Zootropolis has been massive. And the sequel that's been out this year, Zootropolis 2, has been I think the biggest animated film ever. I think it's you know surpassed um Inside Out 2, which was the previous record holder, uh, and it's been massive. So, you know, kids are definitely latching onto it. Um and the fifth one was Jungle Book, which is obviously the live-action remake of the Disney classic, um, and yeah, one of the long line of uh live action remakes of animated films that are pretty much all CGI, so virtually still animated anyway. But you know, it's what Disney are doing, they're still doing it now. Um uh the a big hit from 2016 also for Disney was Moana, uh, which obviously Dwayne Johnson rock, um, and it's a very sort of set in the Hawaiian Islands and uh all very sort of mystical. Um people at control the sea and um are searching for the lost jewel of I can't remember what it's called, but and that is another film that is being remade this year already in live action. So 2026, we're getting a live action Moana, whether we want it or not. Um and it's you know it's less than well, it's ten years since the original, and we've already had a sequel to the animated one as well, and it's just thinking why are Disney are they not just happy that they've got these animated hits, they need to make a live action version of it as well, rather than coming up with new ideas? I don't know. But um you've probably I've sort of alluded to it a fair bit on those top five, but you may notice that all five of those films, so the five biggest box office successes of 2016 were all Disney films. So obviously, we're including Star Wars films and uh MCU films which are under that banner. Um, and yeah, they broke all sorts of records by being uh the owners of the top five films, you know, each of those were well over a hundred million um gross. Uh they were, you know, they became the first studio to have that accolade or to have you know all of these franchises are all making now in their billions and all this sort of thing. And it's um yeah, so obviously they got a lot of flat when they bought sort of Lucasfilm uh that everything's being Disney fired, but clearly, clearly it is working for them. Um this is yeah, probably before the launch of sort of Disney Plus as well. So that's obviously had a big effect because all of their stuff that they used to sort of keep vaulted, all the classics, um, only released on video and DVD every few years to keep the sort of demand up. Now they're you know accessible to everyone 24-7. So um yeah, uh I I can't see Disney sort of coming across anytime soon. Um they are certainly winning. There we go. But um other notable things uh from this year, um we had 10 Cloverfield Lane, which is a um very good um it was almost a pseudo sequel, but it is a sequel to Cloverfield, uh the original, but it's set in um basically an underground bunker for people sort of uh keeping out of the way of the uh alien invasion from the first film. Uh so it's a very close quarters, it's not you know, you don't see a lot of what's going on outside, a little bit at the end. Um so it's pretty much a sort of a three-hander from uh the actors in there, and it's very, very good, uh, very tense, really, really like it. Uh I think for memory serves, they didn't really advertise it as the fact it was going to be a Cloverfield um sequel initially. It was looked like it was pretty much a sort of standalone, um, and then eventually, obviously, they did sort of reveal that it was. Um, a really good film with um Michael Keaton is called The Founder, uh, which if you've not seen that, it's about the guy, not the guy who created McDonald's, because that was obviously the McDonald's is, but uh the guy who basically took it and turned it into a franchise and turned it into a massive money spinner and you know made it fast food. He turned everything around to the point where he you know expanded. And obviously it goes against the wishes of the original founders of it, uh the original creators of uh the restaurant um and makes it the sort of fast food joint that we know and mostly love today. Um but it's a very, very interesting story about you know basically one man's desire to make money over the top of you know the people who uh who run this place's morals, you know, but he's very, very good in that, Michael Keaton. Um another great film actually, which I've touched on a little bit when we talked about um Shane Black recently is The Nice Guys, which is Russell Crowe and Ryan Goslin. Um very good, very much of a piece with Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, uh from Robert Downey Jr. and Val Kilmer a few years before. Uh very good uh Shane Black directing and writing this one, so very much his um his kind of dialogue and sense of uh action movie classic stuff. Uh all good. Um so we had a couple more um of the Fox Marvel films. So this is uh pre them sort of merging with the MCU in any way um because Fox is still independent at this point, not being bought out by Disney. Uh we've got X-Men Apocalypse, which is one of the least successful of the X-Men films. Really, I think it's follows, it's it does a hard job by following Days of Future Past, which was obviously where the old cast and the new cast sort of meet up and sort of all sort of multiversal, but uh this is back to the uh original cast, uh sorry, the cast from the prequel, so this is your uh James McAvoy cast again. Um and yeah, it's just less successful. You've basically got um Oscar Isaac in there as a uh demon who's you know he's sort of all covered up in makeup and mask, and you can't really tell who it is, and like it's kind of a wasted opportunity, really. He's not a great character in there, but uh they did a little bit more successfully with a kind of X-Men spin-off, but not, um, which was Deadpool. So this is the first one with Ryan Reynolds properly as Deadpool. So you may remember in X-Men Origins Wolverine from a few years before, Ryan Reynolds has played Wade Wilson, uh who is technically the same character that becomes Daredevil, but uh Dear Devil, uh Deadpool, but rather than him being the Merc with the mouth, which is what he's known as and which suits Ryan Reynolds to a T, literally born to play that character, um in X-Men Origins Wolverine, they stitch his mouth together and he can't speak, and then it's just like they don't make him into Deadpool, they just make him this weird mercenary with a sewn together mouth. And it's just it was such a misfire that Ryan Reynolds took it upon himself to make sure that this movie happened. They leaked test footage online before they'd even had a you know approval to make it, and you know, it just uh public pressure just meant that it was gonna happen. And as you well know, you know, he's gone on to massive success with this and the sequel, and then eventually with Deadpool and Wolverine, once um Fox was part of Disney, uh it's they're fully in the MCU now, so you know those franchises are properly mashed and all in the MCU, and uh it's amazing, it's all the better for it. So fantastic. I mean, we will definitely talk about Deadpool Wolverine uh as we get closer to the final episode. Um, yeah, other uh again, I mean DC are still trying with their sort of shared universe, but not quite. So you've got Batman versus Superman, which was technically the sequel to um Man of Steel. So you've still got Henry Cavill as Superman, but very much overshadowed by uh Ben Affleck joining as Batman and that becoming the focus of the film. Um and this eventually will lead into Zack Snyder's Justice League. Uh, but in the meantime, there was also this year Suicide Squad, which was David Ayer's version of essentially trying to do a kind of Guardians of the Galaxy thing where the bad guys are the good guys. Um so this is a load of criminals who are implanted with a device in their head that if they don't do these missions for um the Department of Externormal Operations, I think they're called in DC, um, will basically their heads will blow up, so they have to work together. And um I mean it's notable for some things. It's basically uh Margot Robbie, who talked about over the last couple episodes, she was getting bigger and bigger, brilliant as Harley Quinn, absolutely fantastic. I mean, the the look that she's got in it has been so iconic, it's you know, it's kept girls going for the last few, you know, uh Halloween. Um, yeah, and Will Smith is not too bad as a version of Dead Shot, but again, they've not quite nailed a lot of these characters, they're kind of using the the names, but not really properly adopting the uh characteristics of them. Um but yeah, so it's kind of linked to Batman versus Superman. There was there was more of uh it was sort of trailed a little bit that you'd sort of see a little bit of the fact that Batman is in this film, but actually Ben Affleck's on it a lot more than I was expecting in Suicide Squad. Um so they do try and tie it in. Um but unfortunately you got one of um Jared Leto's sort of over-the-top performances as as the Joker. I guess he's just trying to do something very different from what we'd seen with Heath Ledger a few years before, but yeah, it's not for me really. Um and yeah, so this later on, a few years later, got a sequel, The Suicide Squad, which used some characters but not others, and this was James Gunn's um film between Guardians of the Galaxies when he briefly got sacked by um the MCU before he came back to finish off the Guardians. Um so yeah, it's it's it's a bit iffy that one really. Um Batman vs. Superman's okay. Uh obviously that introduces Gal Godot as um Wonder Woman, which is probably the best thing that they did with the uh DC films. So yeah, it sets up a lot, but not amazing film on its own right, unfortunately. Um what else we've got? Oh, um, talking of another misfire, although actually, to be fair, I've not actually watched it. Um this is the Paul Feag version of Ghostbusters, so that's with the all-female cast um from Saturday Night Live. Um and yeah, I've just never got around to watching it. I just don't really feel that it was where the Ghostbusters franchise needed to go. And luckily, a few years later, they agreed with me and did something way better, which again we will definitely get to in some of the remaining episodes that we have left. Um very good Star Trek sequel, Star Trek Beyond, which I think was a lot better than Star Trek Into Darkness, but this is obviously the third film and at the moment final, looks like it's probably going to be final, um, from what's become known as the Kelvin Universe from JJ Abrams. Um got a lot of time for that one. Um an unusually late sequel was Independence Day Resurgence. So, I mean, I can't even remember what year the first Independence Day came out, but I'm guessing you're talking about 1996. So this is uh you know, 20 years after that. Um, and it's basically the son of some of the heroes, and there's some of the originals are in there, so you've got um Jeff Goldblum's there, but you've got no Will Smith and whatnot. Um I can't remember a great deal about it, and I've seen it. I think I own it as well, but um yeah, I should maybe give it another watch, maybe do a double build, the original perhaps, but um yeah. Maybe one one day when I get bored. Um what else we got? Um very, very good music documentary. So I don't know how you feel about Oasis. If you're anything above a sort of a casual fan, give Supersonic a go because it's a brilliant documentary uh and it basically covers you know everything from when they just started off to you know when they burned out and broke up. You know, this was 2016, so there was no thought at this point of the brothers getting back together and doing another gig, which obviously this previous year, 2025, they actually did get around to doing. Uh, but it is really good. It's just the level of sort of access that they've got to old footage, um, they use a lot of archive interviews and stuff like that, so it's as if the characters as the characters, the actual band are narrating it as they go, but it is all done from um from old footage. But there's some really hilarious stuff sort of behind the scenes. Uh, whatever you think of Liam Garrett Gallagher is a funny guy, um, because he just doesn't care. Um, and it's great, and it's you know, it's surprising, it opens up so many avenues that you perhaps didn't really ever think about uh and just makes you love all those songs again, really. Um I've seen it in the cinema twice, it actually got re-released again last year, um, and just as good again, you know, brilliant. It just drives you straight back to your CD collection to get out of the old uh Oasis CDs, and you forget how good those songs are. But uh again, that's maybe dependent on how you felt about Oasis in the first place. Uh what else we've got? So another kind of music documentary is uh David Brent Life on the Road, which is a sort of spin-off of the original Office with Ricky Gervais as his character. Um pretty funny, not too bad at all. Um if you like again, if you if you probably don't like Ricky Gervais, then maybe you wouldn't like that one, not too sure. Uh I'm slipping about all over this list at the minute. Uh Jason Bourne, which was a return to the franchise for Matt Damon after Bourne Legacy hadn't done quite as well with um Jeremy Renner, but that's got some great action in a really good uh chase sequence at the end in Vegas, which is great. Uh Sully, which was Clint Eastwood's telling of the Miracle on the Hudson, as it's known. So the um pilot that lands uh jetliner in the uh Hudson River rather than crashing it into New York. Uh another brilliant uh Tom Hanks performance in that one. Um I think all Tom Hanks performances are brilliant, aren't they? Pretty much. Uh he was also in Hologram for the King this year, which was a very different film. Um but that's pretty good. He's basically um he's a guy who's dealing with like the king of I don't know, like a salt and a brunei kind of character, um, and sort of goes over there to negotiate some sort of deal, falls in love with a um a native over there. Um but yeah, really good uh again. I will say it, but it's a really good Tom Hanks performance, it's great. Uh Allied, which was a World War II film from Robert Zemeckis, uh director of Back to the Future with Brad Pitt. Nice film, uh nice film, it was a good film, certainly. The Shallows, which was um almost like a Jaws um well it's not like Jaws at all, but it's a shark film uh with uh Blake Lively, so she's basically trapped on a boy for most of it, a buoy, if you if you like. Um but very very good, very tense, good stuff in that. Um what else we've got BFG, which was Steven Spielberg's version of the roll doll book. Again, at the moment we're not in an era of sort of classic Spielberg, but he's still, you know, knocking him out of the park in in some respects. Uh what else? Oh, Storks is an animated film that my kids really, really liked for a long, long time. There's some um very funny sort of catchphrases and bits in there, and it's basically about storks that deliver babies and stuff like that. Um, and they're getting taken over by kind of like an Amazon uh style company. Um and some really funny wolves in there that can all combine like a like a Power Ranger Zord or something. Um but that's pretty fun. Um Fantastic Beasts. So this was uh the Harry Potter spin-off. So the original Harry Potters had finished by this point, um, and there'd been some little books written by J.K. Rowling whilst the original Harry Potters were coming out, and they were basically just original like comet relief fundraisers, I think. Uh I've got those original ones, and there was like um Quidditch Through the Ages, little sort of thin, not even novellas, really, um almost like little sort of textbook sort of style things. Um you had that one, and you also had Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which were in the world of Harry Potter, they're basically like a book that they would use in Hogwarts to research you know magical creatures, um, by a fictional guy called Newt Scamander, and this um movie basically takes this character and uh expands it into what what has become a trilogy. Um and they're good. So Eddie Redmain, who was you know Oscar winner at that point, um, and some very good actors in there, they've struggled to hold on to the Character who plays not Dumbledore because that's Jude Law. But what's the villain guy? Not Voldemort, is it? Who's the guy? Oh anyway, the villain character originally was uh turned into Johnny Depp, but then obviously Johnny Depp got kind of cancelled in real life, so then they recast him and stuff like that. But aside from that, you know, they're they're decent. If you like the world of Harry Potter, you'll probably like the world of Fantastic Beasts. Uh I don't know if there's going to be any more. I think it was probably originally planned, but I haven't seen anything about that coming out. Um you had the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Out of the Shadows, another sequel to the live action one. Again, that seems to be where the story ends with those. Uh what else? We got passengers, which was um Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence. So, you know, those two combined in a sci-fi um film, which basically just those two trapped on a uh boat. I think they wake up uh either they're in like suspended animation and they either wake up too early or they wake up too late. I can't remember which it is, but it's basically just them two trying to figure out what's gone on. But um good fun, and you'd have expected that with that cast, you know, both of those were kind of the hottest properties of wear out there at the time. You you'd think that would be massive, but it didn't do a great deal. Um but well worth the watch, certainly. Um and another one really, which is probably one of my top films of the year, would be Doctor Strange. Uh so this is Ben Benedict Humberbatch, who at that point had been getting bigger and bigger over here with things like Sherlock obviously on TV. Um he'd been well involved in the Hobbit films as well. Um but yeah, this was his sort of MCU debut as Dr. Stephen Strange, who's a brilliant, if not arrogant, um neurosurgeon who has a car accident and can no longer perform his surgery. So he goes in search of uh a mystical um assistance really to help him get his powers of um surgery back, but actually adopts something a little bit more and becomes the sorcerer supreme uh and you know embraces magic and everything in that, and that again is a big sort of stepping stone towards uh Avengers Endgame, and he's a big part in that, and he's carried on through uh things like the Spider-Man films as well, he had his own sequel. Um and yeah, he's very, very good uh Cumberbatch, obviously, in everything that he does, and he's brilliant in um in the guise of this arrogant um sorcerer, really, but uh very good. But yeah, my favourite film of the year, and as I say, this is probably one of those that you may not have seen, you may have sort of written off. I don't know if it was a humongous uh success when it came out, but I absolutely loved it. And it's Eddie the Eagle, um, it's Taryn Edgerton as Eddie Edwards, um, with Hugh Jackman as his kind of fictional trainer. So there's some um discussion that perhaps he's an amalgamation of some characters in real life that uh that helped Eddie uh on his way. But essentially what he is, he's a kid who just decides he's gonna enter the Olympics for Britain as is a um downhill ski jumper. Um and he's not got any experience, he's not particularly adept at it, but due to the fact that there isn't many other people sort of entering, he manages to get onto the uh the British team, and he goes to the Olympics in I think it's 85, 86, uh oh 88, 88 Calgary Winter Games. There you go, I've just read that on the back of the DVD. Um and yeah, he just became he's not brilliant, so he's just his attitude, he's just so enthusiastic and he's so like likable. Um he's kind of a little bit of a goon-looking guy, and it just I can remember, you know, I I was old enough at the point in '88 that you could remember he was just all over the TV. He was just became, you know, everybody got behind him, national hero. It was almost better when he, you know, when he fell down rather than doing a successful jump, but he was just unbelievably carrying, you know, the weight of well, initially Britain and then eventually the world was just behind him, you know, he was just such a character. Um, and yeah, so this film is directed by Dexter Fletcher, who's gone on to you know do great things. Bohemian Rhapsody was a big hit. Um, and he but I will still always know him as Spike from Press Gang because you know that's the greatest kids' TV show ever made. Uh, he was fantastic in it. Um I didn't know for years that he wasn't American because he used to put on this accent, which apparently he learnt from just watching too much of the A-Team. Um, but you know, he was brilliant, that sort of love um relationship with Julius Wallace's character Linda Day as well. But yeah, so he's gone on to do lots of um you know other acting, but also doing directing behind the scenes, all this sort of stuff as well. And yeah, he cables up quite often with uh Matthew Vaughan, who produced this one as well, who we talked about last week with things like Kingsman. Um but yeah, he's very, very successfully sort of you know, not probably known by a lot of people as a director, but he's done some of the biggest sort of hits, you know, Rocket Man with um Taryn Edgerton, which is a Elton John story. And yeah, so he's done some massive, massive hits, but to me he will always be Spike. So um it's odd to see his name sort of up there in the credits quite often, but um he's very, very good at what he does. And yeah, this is just a really, really fun film that's just so you know, feel good, it's just life-affirming, and the fact that it all actually happened pretty much like it is in the film, you know, there's there's characters I say that are a little bit sort of fictionalized in there, there's a bit of poetic license, but you know, the the main character himself that is pretty much how he was, pretty much how he sort of lived his life. And yeah, it's um it's a great, great film. It I think would appeal if if you've not seen it, if for example, uh one of your favourite films was uh Cool Runnings, which was about the Jamaican Bob said team. Um possibly that's one of your favourite films. I'm speaking to you here, Chris. And uh if you haven't given this a go, it's very much along the same sort of lines, but I think better. Um but you be the judge. It's um it's just great. Uh you Hugh Jackman's great, you know, bearing in mind this is the you know the year that uh you know he hadn't fully been Wolverine. He does cameo, spoiler in um X-Men Apocalypse. But uh yeah, so he's very much breaking out from what he's done there and becoming this sort of likable uh guy that he has then gone on to do in other films as well. Um and just yeah, he slots in very well. He's supposed to be a kind of an arrogant American, so he fits in very well against the the sort of young British kid who doesn't really want to be training him. He's kind of you know a former Olympic skier himself who's sort of down on his luck, so he's kind of got no choice but to do it. Um but yeah, it's just a very, very fun film. I s saw it when it first came out. Um I can also remember s the second time I watched it, it was uh let's just say I was going through some stuff myself and uh watched it and it just made everything better somehow. Um it's yeah, it's just cheers you up. It really does. If you're having a bit of a downer, if you're having a bit of a bad day, a bit of a bad time, put this one on and it will definitely sort you out. Eddie the Eagle. A really, really good film. So yeah, that is my tip for the top this year. Um we are I know I keep saying it, I know, but we are really galloping on towards the end of the podcast now. Uh we're in 2016 and we're only going to 205 uh 2025, so yeah, not many more to go at all now. But um I'd say we will be doing a question-answer episode shortly, so please do not hesitate to get any questions or messages across to us soon. Um I believe, as well as the sort of text function that I've mentioned before, there is an actual um uh button now to sort of send fan mail, so that will come through onto our um onto our webpage and stuff as well, so that'll be able to see those and uh either answer them in the question or answer them directly for you. Uh answer them in the episode or directly for you. And um yeah, hope to see you back here same time next week uh for 2017. Any ideas what that could be? Hmm, who knows? I haven't even looked yet. But uh nevertheless, I will be here talking about that year and the movies that are therein. So I look forward to speaking to you then. Thank you very much for listening. Please continue to do so and speak to you soon. Bye bye.